This is the story of me and SG.

I joined 4 or 5 years ago and made some great friends. I lived with a few of them as a matter of fact. It changed my life in some ways. Bla bla bla. Wo cares?

But then the scene kinda changed here. It used to be a place were I would sign on every day and discuss all sorts of things from art to current events to whatever with people. I was very active here. I wrote a new blog every day. I spoke regularly with a great group of people.

But honestly this site has changed quite a bit. Most of my friends left. I left for a while. And I came back to the site after a number of months only because I had already pre-paid for a year. Like an idiot.

But since my second life here at SG I've made a group of new friends who I value very much. You know who you are. And that's nice. I like that.

But now I want to know about you. What inspires you? Give me a book, a song, a painting, whatever. Tell me what you like about it. Tell me why you like it.

I'm looking to refuel my brain.

I just want you all to know that if I'm selected to run as Vice President with Obama I won't forget you. You guys mean a lot to me.

However, if I'm selected to run with McCain I plan on forgetting everyone I know.

To Do List:

1. Grocery shopping

2. deliver the head of Sancho Padillo to the rebels and collect my reward in shiney silver.

3. get brakes looked at.

4. Write that Opera based on the life of Fat Albert

5. burn my enemies to cinders and choke the rivers of Americas with the ranks of their dead.

6. feed the cat.

For those wondering, here are some completely random facts about myself:

1. I have a strange, inexplicable dislike for perfectly harmless words like "delicious". I don't know why. As a matter of fact I usually don't like hearing food described. Again, I have no idea why.

2. I've had 12 broken bones, but oddly all on the left side of my body.

3. This is gonna sound all name-droppy but I don't mean it that way: the last fisttfight I was in was was with Jared Leto. I don't really know Jared Leto and I wasn't fighting HIM. We were kinda tag team fighting. Jared Leto and I happened to be in the same place at the same time and some guy was being a dick and he had words with both of us. Jared spit on the guy (yes, spit), the guy charged at Jared, I tried to hold him back and he hit me. So I hit the guy back. And then Jared Leto kicked him. And that was my last fistfight. That's the very DEFINITION of random, as far as I'm concerned.

4. I once got poison ivy on my penis. I've told a few of you this story. I was peeing in the woods by my grandmother's house and somehow I must have caught it there. I had to go to the hospital because it got infected.

5. I've always thought I would get married at around the age of 40. Always. Nobody in my family has ever married that late. I never based that on any example I've seen. But since I was younger that always seemed about right to me.

6. I wrote a letter to Jimmy Stewart when I was a kid and he sent back an autographed picture. I still have it.

7. My most embarrassing moment ever was probably in Africa. I was in Ghana in this little village helping to build a school. Everyone in the group I was in was having horrible things going on in their nether regions. Me included. One day I was standing on a ladder painting and something especially horrible happened that demanded that I change my pants RIGHT NOW. The problem was that we were staying about a mile or so away and ANYWHERE any one of us went we were followed by 30 kids- kids who wanted to hold our hand and be carried on our shoulders and all that. And every adult along the way wanted to chat, or wave or something like that. And here I was with an...um..issue in my pants and I had to try to sneak back to my change my clothes to rectify it. Of course that didn't work out and so I walked that mile feeling ENTIRELY uncomfortable and self-conscious with 30 kids following me!! And when I got back to our little house there was nowhere to throw away the evidence, so I had to bury it! With all the kids and some random adults just standing around watching.

That was fun.

And thanks for playing.

I'd like to ask you all to get my name tattooed on your ass. In big block letters. Across both cheeks. My name is Chris, by the way.

I know it would be helpful if my name had an "o" in it but what can you do.

Thank you all. I wanna see pictures.

Have a great weekend.

xoxo

Did you know that a baby whale is called a calf? Isn't that strange?

A baby swan is a flapper. A baby goat, of course, is a kid. A baby fish is called a fry. huh? A baby beaver is called a kitten. What?

It gets stranger. A group of alligators is officially called a congregation, which I think is funny. A group of apes is called a shrewdness. Really? A group of bears is called a sloth? Who gets to make this up? A group of camels is called a flock?? Isn't a flock a group of birds? How the fuck does that work?

WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE???

A group of cheetahs is called a coalition, which sounds very political to me. But a group of crows is called a murder. How cool is that? How did they get that name? You'd think that would be a group of...um...things that kill. LIke humans. But no.

I'm not sure why this interests me, and I may be the only one here. But did you know that male dinosaurs are called "bulls" and females are "cows". A cow is also the official name for a female elephant, a hippo and a dolphin. That just seems wrong to me.



Anyway. In other news George Carlin died last week as everybody knows. Carlin was a real hero of mine because he was fearless. He broke down barriers of thought in my own mind and constantly, constantly made me question all my assumptions, be they about religion, capitalism, democracy, "dirty words", "morals" or anything else. He was someone who saw the inherent bullshit in pretending that a certain group of people know what's best for us and that these people deserve our obedience. "To live outside the law you must be honest, " Bob Dylan once said. George Carlin was a little more direct- "All authority is bullshit". And he lived it. Do yourself a favor and spend some time today looking up Carlin clips on You Tube. You'll thank me later.

You know what Carlin's death made me appreciate, though? Manko. Yes, Manko. Losing one original only makes me appreciate the others I know all the more. Manko is one of those blessed few people I know who dares to think for herself and refuse to accept anyone else's notions of morality and propriety as her own. I mean, that can be said to a greater or lesser degree about most people on this site. But Manko really walks the walk. Every day someone else like that comes along is a day we inch closer to our real potential.

So that's my little Manko appreciation of the day.


"The very existence of the flamethrower means that at some time someone said "There are some people over there that I would really like to set on fire, but I'm much to far away to get the job done. If only I had a device that would let me throw flame on them." -George Carlin

It's a rainy Sunday and I'm doing nothing all day. I'm going to see "Hamlet" in Central Park tonight so I'm hoping the rain ends.

I went to the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island yesterday. It's really fun. It's such a freakshow. It's one of those things that can only exist in Coney Island and New Orleans. Which is why I love those two places so much.

I had never been to the parade but I know a girl who was gonna be in it. She's a burlesque dancer and I heard the parade was basically topless girls and dancing freaks. Great, right? Welll.... It was hot as fuck and packed shoulder to shoulder. The parade was full mostly of gay men dressed as sailors or mermaids. Gay men LOVE to be in a parade, don't they? My god. They can't get enough of it. And God bless-em for that.

They also love to be mostly naked. I saw a lot of man ass at the Mermaid Parade. I came home and I looked for mermaids online. I saw no man ass. I saw no hairy backs. I saw no chaps. Somehow these all got into the parade. Clearly I'm missing something.

As for the topless girls, well they were mostly over 50. Or 40. And had as many teeth as boobs. But God bless them too. Seriously. I still had lots of fun. Coney Island is amazing.

But this is something I loved: I'm watching the floats go by and the float for Brooklyn Brewery Beer stops in front of me. Coincidentally my friends had gone to get beer so I'm by myself and next to me is a couple who knew one of the girls on the Beer float. So this woman is waving frantically at the float. And the girl (who I guesses to be her daughter) spots the woman and waves back, frantically as well. They're maybe 15 feet apart yelling "HI!" And waving at each other. And the float is stopped so that's all they're doing. The woman waves. The girl waves back. The woman waves again. The girl waves back. And they were SO HAPPY about this they could barely contain themselves. And I was thinking that these two people probably see each other every day, yet here they were waving frantically at each other just cause one was in the parade. I like that. Because I was doing the same thing. I was standing around in the sun shoulder to shoulder with a pack of sweaty people only to watch OTHER sweaty people walk by. Isn't that kinda odd? But that's what we do. Something about us makes us stop what we're doing and watch someone else whenever they put on makeup or get on a stage or something like that. Put someone in a mask or a costume and we look to them to be transported somehow. It's like we expect performers have the key to some sort of grace that's normally missing from life. It's ridiculous to expect that from art of any kind, except sometimes art delivers. That's the magical thing about it. That's why I'm gonna go see "Hamlet" tonight. It's the best we've yet to come up with as a species.

Anyway it's what the Mermaid Parade made me think about.

And special thanks to Lexie for her inspiration.

If I hear the term "cougar" in reference to a woman over the age of 35 who has sex ONE more time I'm gonna scream.

We're a nation of infants.

that's all I have to say today.

So I get this call on Friday from this girl Jen who I know. Jen lives in PA but she was gonna be in NY for the night. She was going to a birthday party in Williamsburg or something and asked me to stop by. I didn't really want to go (because I'm lazy) but Jen is one of those people who I keep saying "we should totally do something next time you're in NY" to. And here she was so I had no excuse.

So I get to the building, get buzzed in and walk into an apartment where EVERYONE is in a blonde wig. "I'm missing something" I thought to myself. Jen walked up to me dressed as Madonna in her "Material Girl" video and gave me a hug. Then it finally dawned on me-EVERYONE was dressed as Madonna. There was "Whose That GIrl" Madonna and Cowboy Madonna and "Dick Tracy" Madonna. It was mostly gay men in drag, of course. One guy was dressed as Courtney Love, in defiance, which I thought was hysterical. I, of course, had no Madonna costume so I just told people I was Sean Penn.

Then I went into the kitchen and saw a guy (yes, guy) dressed as "Sex Book" Madonna-which meant that he was naked except for a wig and high heels.

Madonna does not have a prince albert. OR a penis. this was a bad costume. And his naked ass was next to open alcohol. that's a fire hazard!

I find this lack of attention to detail unacceptable.

I was helping my friend Rachel move on Sunday. First of all let me tell you that asking someone to help you move is the ULTIMATE favor you can ask. I don't think asking someone to bring your child to term in some sort of in vitro fertilization program is as big a favor as asking someone to help you move. It's a major pain in the ass.

That said, it's Sunday morning and we're moving. The U Haul is parked on Wall Street right outside her building. I come out with a cart fill of boxes to see Rachel's ass sticking out of the back of the U Haul. She's arranging something in the back. And a car full of Japanese businessmen had pulled up behind her and they were all taking pictures of her ass. All of them. So I put my boxes down and just gave them a look. Sheepishly they put their cameras down and started walking away from the car. I noticed, however, that they were parked right in front of a fire hydrant.

"Hey!" I yelled. "You can't park there!"

They all looked at me blankly, then at each other. English was clearly not their strong suite. So I pointed to the fire hydrant and shook my head "no". Still blank stares. Then I mimed writing a parking ticket. One by one they began nodding in understanding. They huddled together, and then in very broken, accented english one of them said to me "Mind your business".

Then they took more pictures of Rachel's ass and walked away.